GroupMe is a group messaging service that lets you create groups from the contacts on your smartphone and start conversations involving everyone in the group. The company offers clients for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 and also works over SMS.

Today Skype announced that it’s acquiring GroupMe — which actually means Microsoft is buying GroupMe, since Microsoft acquired Skype recently.

Skype offers voice, video, and text chat services for PC, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices. Earlier this year the company also acquired Qik, a service for recording and sharing short videos.

In a press release, Skype says the GroupMe acquisition will bring the company’s expertise in “text-based communications,” location sharing, and photo sharing to Skype. In other words, we could see group messaging capabilities coming soon to Skype’s mobile apps — as well as some of the company’s SMS features which allow you to engage in group communications with non-smartphones.

Following HP’s announcement that it would discontinue all webOS hardware including smartphones and tablets, Microsoft’s Brandon Walsh reached out to webOS developers, promising free phones and other tools if they were interested in developing for Windows Phone 7. So far he’s received over 200 replies.

For its part, HP is trying to convince webOS developers not to jump ship. While the company will no longer make devices that run webOS, HP hasn’t yet put the operating system to bed. Instead, officials are hoping to get other companies to license the software for use on their own devices, much the way Microsoft and Google already do with their smartphone operating systems.

The problem is that it’s hard to see a future for webOS at the moment. Less than two months ago HP was gung ho about the TouchPad tablet. Today the company is liquidating its inventory by selling the tablet for just $99. Since there currently aren’t any other companies using webOS, who’s to say that a month from now HP might not just pull the plug on the software division as well?

HP is trying to persuade developers to stick around, and promises to keep supporting webOS. But all HP has to offer at the moment are words and a user base that won’t be growing for a while (at least not once this weekend’s HP TouchPad fire sale is over). Microsoft, on the other hand, is giving developers free phones.

Up for some good times with your Windows Phone 7-toting friends? Firing up the new We’re In app puts you on the fast track for geolocation-powered fun.

Select friends from your phone’s contacts, let “your peeps” (Microsoft’s words, not mine) know what you’re up for, and let the app know how long you’d like to make your location known. We’re In offers built-in group messaging — which we already knew was coming system-wide in the Windows Phone 7 Mango update — and lets your friends ask questions and post updates (like “stuck in traffic” or “almost there”) right inside the app. When the event expires, location sharing stops automatically. Participants can also tap “leave” at any time to opt out instantly.

We’re In is sort of like an answer to check-in apps like Google Latitude and Foursquare, though it doesn’t yet offer goodies like check-in deals or badges. Of course, with Microsoft’s affinity for Facebook there’s a decent chance that We’re In could add support for Facebook Places and Facebook deals in future versions of the app.

Keen-eyed observers might also detect some similarities between We’re In and another Microsoft app for Windows Phone 7, Lunchbox. Lunchbox, however, is a more 9-to-5 take on things and is geared toward business use — power lunches, spontaneous meetings, and the like.

Microsoft is discontinuing its eBook platform. Long before EPUB and Amazon Kindle books had become the de facto standard, the Microsoft Reader .lit format was one of the most popular eBook formats around. I read some of my first digital books using Microsoft Reader for Pocket PC (back before Microsoft’s mobile operating system was rebranded as Windows Mobile and then Windows Phone).

The company has also offered Reader software for desktop and laptop computers as well as tablet-style devices.

Starting on November 8th, 2011 you won’t be able to purchase any new books in the .lit format, and Microosft will stop offering Reader software from its website on August 30th, 2012.

If you’ve already purchased eBooks using the .lit format, you can continue to read them using  Reader software or any other compatible client after that point.

You can use Calibre or other eBook software to convert DRM-free .lit files to EPUB or another format. If your books have DRM you’ll need to remove the copy-protection first using software such as ConvertLIT first.

via The Digital Reader

Microsoft will soon begin pushing out Windows Phone 7 Mango as an over-the-air software update for devices currently running Windows Phone 7. But if you’ve got an HTC phone and you’re willing to do a little hacking (and warranty voiding) you don’t have to wait. DarkForcesTeam has put together a custom ROM for most HTC Windows Phone 7 devices.

The DFT Freedom ROM is based on Mango, which means that you get all the new features including support for multitasking and improved Windows Live Skydrive integration and an improved media player.

It’s also pre-jailbroken, which means you should be able to install apps that aren’t available from the Windows Phone Marketplace. The developer shave removed the apps that are typically preloaded by carriers such as T-Mobile or AT&T, but left the HTC apps intact.

The custom ROM should work with the HTC Pro 7, HD3, Surround, Trophy, and HD7 and it’s available in 22 different languages.

You can find more details at the xda-developers forum, where you’ll also find links to the download files and information on installing the custom firmware. The instructions aren’t really written for beginners, so either make sure you know what you’re doing… or you’re willing to risk breaking your device before proceeding.

You know a mobile operating system has arrived when developers start writing classic video game console emulators for it. So it looks like Windows Phone 7 has arrived, because a Gameboy emulator called Wario’s Jewels launched last month.

The app features a virtual gamepad, smooth graphics and frame-rates, and a file browser and game information menus that look pretty good on Windows Phone 7.

So far the developer says the emulator can support about 500 different games, and you’ll will be able to add games to their smartphones by uploading them to a server so that they’ll be automatically downloaded to your device.

Unfortunately Wario’s Jewels is not available in the Windows Phone Marketplace. You’ll need to unlock your phone with a developer account or using ChevronWP7 in order to install the Gameboy emulator.

via xda-developers

Nokia will start offering smartphones running Windows Phone 7 in the US and other markets later this year. But for the next year or two the company will continue to offer phones running the Symbian operating system as well as cheaper “feature phones” with web browsing, chat, and other internet apps — it just won’t offer them in the US.

All Things D reports that once Nokia starts selling Windows Phone 7 devices in the States, it will pull out of the Symbian and feature phone spaces.

The single-minded focus on Windows Phone 7 for the US also helps explain why Nokia has no plans to launch the N9 smartphone running MeeGo software in the United States.

Symbian phones were never very popular in the States anyway. The operating system was one of the dominant smartphone platforms in Europe up until recently, but the OS has been losing market share to iOS, Android, and other platforms in recent years.

Nokia has already promised to offer support and software updates for Symbian phones for the next 5 years, so if you’re currently using a Symbian smartphone you might not need to replace it anytime soon.

Evernote has launched an update to its Windows Phone 7 app which adds support for rich text editing, sharing URLs for notes, and more.

What makes Evernote special is the fact that it combines native note-taking apps for mobile devices such as an iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone device and a web-based service so that all of your notes are backed up online. So that new URL sharing feature allows you to create a note on your phone and then share it via email, IM, Twitter, or another service. Then the recipient can click the URL to view your note on the web.

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